I got my new moto g in december 2013 and was thrilled with it. It seemed as the hidden flagship killer phone and it also delivered. Until it stopped vibrating in August.

A small nuisance at most, however I felt it could be remedied, since it’s impossible to sit in meetings and not miss calls unless your phone’s haptics are intact. Also, typing is much easier with the feedback under the fingertips.

I went to Motorola’s customer care site and the chat I’ve had with their first rep seemed promising. I explained everything and they told me I needed to send the phone to the authorised servicing partner in my home country, Slovenia. However, I checked and found out that this partner quit their contract with Motorola in 2013. Wouldn’t it be cool if Motorola knew who their servicing partners were?

Anyway, I was promplty told in another chat with Motorola, that the other possibility was to send my phone to their UK servicing partner SBE LTD. I got a reference number for my case, and along with the IMEI and the original invoice I sent my phone to UK, along with my letter explaining the issue. Also, I sent it via registered mail, costing me 5,22€, this was on September 9.

Motorola claims that all servicing request would be handled within 7 days of their receipt of the handset, so I waited for about 10 days. In the meantime I checked with my post carrier, and found out my phone was delivered to SBE on September 12.

At the end of September I started getting nervous. I checked with SBE’s customer care via email upon which they told me that they received the phone on September 25. The phone obviously lay unregistered at SBE for almost two weeks, but hey, I said I’d wait the seven more days promised by Motorola and inquire again in the beginning of October.

So I did and got a really stupid response that they didn’t have my address. Clearly my address was a part of the accompanying letter that they received along with the phone. Plus, they Motorola’s chat reps had my address, the address was also on the original invoice. Not to mention that they had my email address all the time. Ok, I sent them the address again and waited for another week.

Then the real mess started.

On October 7 SBE informed me I could not receive the phone back unless I paid another 19,80GBP, as the warranty did not cover for shipments outside of UK. Furthermore I’d have to inquire for the details about how to pay this extra cost on a premium charge phone number in UK. I complained about the additional cost and also asked them to provide the payment details via email so that I could avoid making international calls to premium charged numbers.

No answer for a week.

So I budged and decided to call the premium charge phone number. There I was greeted by a recorded message of being welcome to EE’s customer service line and that I should wait for the call to be answered. I waited for five minutes and hung up. I wrote another letter to SBE and also to Motorola. SBE did not answer at all, while Motorola, even worse, told me that I can check about my phone with SBE!

Now’s October 25, Motorola’s servicing partner SBE is still hijacking my phone yet I am happy for finding out that there’s a European Customer Center through which I will now be claiming not just my phone back but also damages from Motorola for not being able to use their product within the warranty period, and also for the costs I have incurred with managing of this warranty case.

Furthermore, dear Motorola, get you customer care game in order. Even the experience with you chat was disappointing. Your reps do not follow up on the cases, they don’t send transcripts of the chats to email as promised, and sometimes they’re even rude. This is simply not ok, regardless of whether you’re owned by Google or Lenovo.